How do I choose one advisor to handle my personal accounts?
It’s been interesting noticing patterns after meeting with advisors in the last few months— they each have slightly different niches, slightly different value propositions and approaches.
Yet most (besides family office advisors and HNWI advisors) outsource the actual money management and offer some mix of emotional support/accountability, and are basically monetizing their likability and rapport without offering better returns than the market or better advice than common investment practices. They all seem very similar in terms of professional value, and their difference is that they are trusted by different groups of people to do essentially the same role— to keep people invested in “the market” consistently until they retire.
I met an advisor years ago when we were both green and focused on changing the world. He had just left Edward Jones and started his own firm, and was figuring it all out. We’ve kept in touch, I’ve referred him some clients over the years that have been very satisfied. And when I re-interviewed him during CLA, I discovered that he:
now has 1000 clients,
over $220M in AUM,
has almost doubled his clients and AUM in the last year,
has been (allegedly) outperforming the market with his contrarian approach,
and has done all this with a staff of 3-4 people.
He keeps it extremely simple, he allocates all of his clients money the same as he allocates his own money, and does an allocation of dividend stocks + crypto. His quote is “I treat every one of your dollars the exact same as I do every one of my dollars. This is the higher definition of what a fiduciary is.” Apparently he puts 85% to 90% in solid dividend stocks, which gives him the time to research and trade some more volatile crypto stocks. And if he is making the same trades across his portfolio, he could probably be a market mover for smaller crypto coins and could run potentially pump and dump them. I don't think he does this, but it seems like he could with the volume of money he could trade in and out of the market.
His name is DJ Windle at Windle Wealth and if you look him up on LI and FB, you’ll see he tends to make contrarian posts and troll Edward Jones. Definitely a different type of FA.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/djwindle/
His value prop is basically “make it extremely simple and care more about the people.” He also has been one of the leaders in implementing AI, tech systems, and trading crypto over the last 5 years amongst all the people I know. He’s getting his EA this year so he can do AI-assisted tax planning for his clients not as a revenue generator, but as an additional service so his clients can get better tax advice on crypto-related tax loss and gain harvesting.
And out of all the advisors I've met so far, he seems to be the main one I'd feel comfortable placing my old 401Ks with. At this point, he has managed my in-laws accounts for 13 years, as well as a few other family members and a few clients and friends.
Do you see anything I have said or he has posted that is a red flag, or have advice on what to ask or verify before moving my accounts over to him?
Or in the game theory of adding 100 partner advisors this year, is there more value in not picking one advisor for my personal accounts right now as I learn more about the opportunities and build new partnerships?